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It may be spring according to the astrophysicists who calculate the vernal equinox, but listeners across much of the United States are still hunkered down, waiting out winter. Lingering frosts, snow that refuses to melt, inescapable winds, and drizzle may be with us for a while yet.

But at least we can take a sonic vacation. The Southern Hemisphere is just seeing another summer draw to a close, and for the past three months, across three continents and as many oceans, a host of musicians below the equator have been making exactly the sort of energetic dance, sexy funk, shimmery pop, and nostalgic retro that has evoked golden days and warm nights for decades on both halves of Earth. Here are 12 songs from the subtropical South that had me, at least, looking forward to summer in the middle of a Midwestern winter.

1. Zuzuka Poderosa "Seda [Kush Arora, Jubilee & Burt Fox Edit]"Brazil / Indonesia / USAWe begin with something of a cheat, as "Seda" was recorded in New York, produced in San Francisco, and remixed in Miami. But though she now lives in Brooklyn, performer Zuzuka Poderosa was born in Rio de Janeiro, of mixed Brazilian and Indonesian heritage. She calls her rhythm-heavy dance music "carioca bass," and it bears the distinctive sound of Rio's humanity-packed, beat-pulsing clubs and streets.

2. Scotty Raz ft. Lil'C "Pamela"Madagascar / ItalyAside from the language, there's not much of a particularly Malagasy flavor about "Pamela." DJ Raz take his cues from Swedish and American producers like RedOne and Dr. Luke, and singer Lil'C, though she grew up in Madagascar, now lives in Rome and uses AutoTune as heavily as any Europopper. The result is a jolt of energy instantly recognizable in clubs around the world.

3. Flume "Holdin' On"AustraliaHarley Streten, an electronic producer from Sydney who releases music as Flume, works in an idiom familiar worldwide: the dance song with a massive vocal sample to give it structure. "Holdin' On" clips Anthony White's 1977 B-side "I Can't Turn You Loose" in much the same way as Avicii's "Levels" used Etta James' "Something's Got a Hold on Me," and is on its way to becoming nearly as popular. Flume is already one of the top electronic acts in Australia, after having only released his debut album in November. The rest of the world is next.

4. Los Labios "Bailando en Otra Parte"ArgentinaThe cumbia rhythm—that distinctive sandpaper triplet—has accrued many meanings since it spread from coastal Colombia in the mid-20th century. From Peruvian chicha to U.S. tejano, it underpins much slyly funky Latin music of the past 50 years. In Argentina as elsewhere, cumbia has mostly been working-class dance-and-drinking music, but a new generation is revamping it in a lot of different directions. Los Labios are an indie-pop band working in the cumbia tradition, and frontwoman Lulú Jankilevich's thin voice is flexible enough to be expressive in a wide range of emotions.

5. Demor ft. Bucie, Black Coffee & Zakes Bantwini "The One"South AfricaSouth African deep house, or kwaito, notable for a beat that can project calm while remaining insistent, is one of the great treasures of the modern age. Singer and producer Demor Sikhosana assembles a who's who of modern kwaito for this single: He sings the first verse, Bucie sings the second, and Black Coffee does the chorus, while Zakes Bantwini co-produces. This video closes out early; the full song (available on Soundcloud) gives the outstanding singers more room to improvise, and lets the tight, superbly poised groove breathe as well.

6. RAN "Hari Baru"IndonesiaSoutheast-Asian pop markets tend to be friendlier to sunny guitar music than the rest of the world, and Indonesia's RAN is among the best at that job description. The name is an acronym for the three members: Rayi (lead singer), Asta (guitarist), and Nino (singer). They're veterans of the Indo-pop scene, having been established since 2008, but are still only barely older than the members of One Direction, whose floppy, huggy, bouncy music is their closest Western analogue. "Hari Baru," with its Motown stomp and twinkly accents, is a wide grin of a pop song, regardless of the listener's language.

7. Aaradhna "Lorena Bobbitt"New ZealandFrom one '60s throwback to another, but rather than sunshine pop a girl-group sway. Aaradhna is of Samoan and Indian descent, and began her career singing modern R&B. But her recent turn inhabiting the classic American sound ranks her nearly on the level of Brits like Adele or the late Amy Winehouse. Here she even manages some of the latter's mordant bite, delivered as cheerfully as Mary Wells.

8. Ary "Ti Tonico"AngolaI last wrote about Ary in company with Angola's premier transgender rapper, Titica; her solo material isn't quite as boundary-pushing, but it's still very accomplished. Famous for her kizomba (a ballad form related to the Franco-Caribbean zouk) and semba (African samba) material, here Ary jumps into a tango, taken at the speed of modern kuduro. It's a song about juggling romantic relationships and family ties—a transliteration of the title would be "Unc' Tony"—a perennial topic in traditional pop forms.

9. Bajofondo "Pide Piso"Uruguay
The band used to be called Bajofondo Tango Club, during the early-'00s tango revival among European yuppies. There's still a tango overlay to their glitchy funk, but the rhythm here is for the most part pure disco. The eight-bit graphics of the video lends the electronic instrumental something of a narrative: Even when the beat falls away into romantic moodiness, you get the sense that the rhythm won't be gone for long.

10. Mixtape ft. Eva "Je Te Veux Tout Près de Moi"French PolynesiaFrench island music has tended to cross-pollinate productively in the Internet age; there's a certain amount of Martinican zouk and Hatian compas in this Taihitian ballad. The primary ingredient, though, is American R&B of the past 20 years, particularly as it intersects with hip-hop. The title means "I want you next to me," and the song doesn't need to both open and close with the sound of a heartbeat to indicate that it's very serious about the sentiment. Eva acquits herself better than Mixtape, but singing a ballad is a much less thankless task than rapping one.

11. Dear Reader "Down Under"South Africa / GermanyI've included two South African videos because 20 years after apartheid there's still a strong enough cultural divide that it might as well be two countries. Dear Reader is the indie-pop project of Cherilyn MacNeil, a South African singer-songwriter currently living in Berlin. It would be possible to draw a line from African tribal musics to the heavily rhythmic and repetitive elements of "Down Under," but it would probably be a stretch; it shares those elements with half the English-language indie music on the market today.

12. Chileswing "Tren al Sur"Chile
Summer nights on either hemisphere should always end with jazz when possible; Chileswing's big-band variation will do nicely. This is a cover of a popular 1990 Chilean new-wave song by Los Prisioneros, and by turning the rhythm into a cool-jazz riff, the group pull off a credible rendition. It's not the furthest thing from kitsch, but that, too, is a summer tradition.

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Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

Why the ingrained expectation that women should desire to become parents is unhealthy

In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

Since the end of World War II, the most crucial underpinning of freedom in the world has been the vigor of the advanced liberal democracies and the alliances that bound them together. Through the Cold War, the key multilateral anchors were NATO, the expanding European Union, and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as never before in history.

Under the shrewd and relentless assault of a resurgent Russian authoritarian state, all of this has come under strain with a speed and scope that few in the West have fully comprehended, and that puts the future of liberal democracy in the world squarely where Vladimir Putin wants it: in doubt and on the defensive.

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

You’ve likely seen the video before: a stream of kids, confronted with a single, alluring marshmallow. If they can resist eating it for 15 minutes, they’ll get two. Some do. Others cave almost immediately.

This “Marshmallow Test,” first conducted in the 1960s, perfectly illustrates the ongoing war between impulsivity and self-control. The kids have to tamp down their immediate desires and focus on long-term goals—an ability that correlates with their later health, wealth, and academic success, and that is supposedly controlled by the front part of the brain. But a new study by Alexander Soutschek at the University of Zurich suggests that self-control is also influenced by another brain region—and one that casts this ability in a different light.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

Modern slot machines develop an unbreakable hold on many players—some of whom wind up losing their jobs, their families, and even, as in the case of Scott Stevens, their lives.

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Stacy thought that her husband was off to a job interview followed by an appointment with his therapist. Instead, he drove the 22 miles from their home in Steubenville, Ohio, to the Mountaineer Casino, just outside New Cumberland, West Virginia. He used the casino ATM to check his bank-account balance: $13,400. He walked across the casino floor to his favorite slot machine in the high-limit area: Triple Stars, a three-reel game that cost $10 a spin. Maybe this time it would pay out enough to save him.

A report will be shared with lawmakers before Trump’s inauguration, a top advisor said Friday.

Updated at 2:20 p.m.

President Obama asked intelligence officials to perform a “full review” of election-related hacking this week, and plans will share a report of its findings with lawmakers before he leaves office on January 20, 2017.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Friday that the investigation will reach all the way back to 2008, and will examine patterns of “malicious cyber-activity timed to election cycles.” He emphasized that the White House is not questioning the results of the November election.

Asked whether a sweeping investigation could be completed in the time left in Obama’s final term—just six weeks—Schultz replied that intelligence agencies will work quickly, because the preparing the report is “a major priority for the president of the United States.”

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

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